Unknown Worlds Entertainment (thanks
PlanetHalf-Life Forums and Ant) has word on plans for the future of the
Natural Selection modification for Half-Life and beyond. According to the
update, the team is currently at work on a Source edition of the modification,
and plans are also in the works for Natural Selection 2, a fully commercial
project: "The game design has been started (hoo-boy, fun stuff), but this will
be a full-fledged $50 (or so) retail game, not a mod. It will use a
next-generation engine (like Source, Unreal Engine 3, etc.) and will take years
and millions of dollars to create. This is what I'm now spending the majority of
my time on."

Natural Selection is my favourite game of all time. It blew my mind the first time I phased in that evening it was released. Played it to death over the next 18 months. It was made for free (give or take a few donations) and is still so far ahead of most other multiplayer games with their $1,000,000 budgets. Battlefield 2 are even adopting the commander mode idea, having finally realised a big disorganised spam fest just isnít fun.

In an interview Flayra gave some time a go he was thinking out loud about the possibility of a NS MMO one day, with the skies full of drop ships etc. Iím not saying this will be NS 2 but you can get an idea of how far he wants to take the franchise. If hundreds of generic, awful corridor shooters can get funding for their development I see no reason why he wonít get the money he needs.